[Nottingham] Problems recording in stereo

[Duncan John Fyfe]

On Tue, 2007-11-20 at 09:11 +0000, Dan Robertson wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I'm trying to record music from an analogue source via
> the line in jack and have been trying a variety of
> programs in Ubuntu (Sound Recorder, GLAME, Audacity)
> with no joy. I can record in mono fine, but I seem
> unable to record in stereo. It doesn't seem to be the
> connection because I can play through the soundcard in
> stereo. I used to be able to record in stereo OK when
> I used Windows - anyone know what's happening?
> 

Can you tell us anything about the hardware ?
(lshw or lspci should give you some info).

Some on-motherboard sound chips have "interesting"
features (like single bit volume controls) and 
it will help if we can exclude this possibility first.

Assuming alsa be the back-end to the ubuntu sound
set up try "alsamixer" if available.  It can reveal 
features of your sound chip which are not available through
gnome-volume-control.

It is also worth trying something simple (avoiding plugins
etc) like:
arecord -f cd -t wav -d 60 soundtest.wav
to see what you get.

Have fun,
Duncan